Struan

Stevenson

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"Choice for Scotland”

Biofuels vote response

In response to a number of letters and emails about biofuels following the vote in the European Parliament's Environment Committee on 11 July to limit the production of some crop-based biofuels, Struan's standard reply is below:

Dear

Thank you for your letter regarding the 'Biofuels' proposal which was voted on 11th July in the European Parliament's Environment Committee. My colleague Julie Girling, the Shadow Rapporteur for the ECR Group for this file in both the Agriculture (AGRI) and Environment (ENVI) Committees has been working on this topic for quite some time, and I am aware of many of the challenges and issues we face in amending this proposal.

Regarding the use of food crops to make biofuels, after many lengthy discussions on the best way forward, the ENVI Committee adopted a consolidated amendment setting a 5.5% cap on the contribution that biofuels made from certain ‘food crops’ (i.e. cereal and other starch rich crops, sugars and oil crops) can make to targets under the Renewable Energy Directive. This amendment also introduced a sub-target of 2% for non-land using advanced biofuels to boost their production and achieve greater carbon reductions.

Concerning ILUC factors, I supported an amendment calling for ILUC emissions to be accounted from 2020 as part of the obligation to reduce the carbon intensity of transport fuels supplied under the Fuel Quality Directive. This builds on the original Commission proposal which calls for ILUC emissions to be reported from 2015.

In addition, the Committee called for a Commission report to be submitted to the European Parliament before the end of 2015 to consider the positive and negative environmental and economic impacts of biofuels produced from waste residues, co-products or non-land using feedstocks.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me with your comments, I will be sure to bear them in mind ahead of the vote.